Puzzle Madness

Chapter 27 Murderer
Gala, gala.
The skinny man inserted a utility knife into the bottom of the fabric sofa and clumsily cut open the bottom, half tearing and half pulling; then he lifted up the entire fabric bottom:
In the gap between the wooden frame and the sponge filling is a woven bag covered with stripes.

He carefully grabbed the woven bag with both hands—it was much heavier than he'd imagined. Just pulling it up felt like he was straining his trapezius muscle.

The skinny man unzipped the woven bag and pulled out a bunch of cotton balls. After the cotton balls were taken out, the woven bag was filled with the sound of metal clanging. The skinny man took out the remaining items one by one:

Two hot weapons--
A bullpup L85 rifle, its original handguard replaced with a dark camouflage, and one of the most famous pistols: the Glock 17; even a skinny man with no interest in such things could recognize it. The magazines were tied with dark red ripcord, and two boxes of bullets of different calibers emitted a greasy smell.

This was the first time the skinny man had seen a real gun in real life.

The skinny man picked up the bullpup rifle and fiddled with it carefully, occasionally using it as a maraca, swinging it up and down with both hands, trying to find the strange noise coming from it.

He put down his rifle and subconsciously pushed up his nonexistent glasses. Realizing his own antics, the skinny man let out a low, bitter laugh.

"Hey, why are these things here?"

"Give me this. I don't know how to use it."

Thinking of this: the skinny man subconsciously reopened the instruction manual, trying to find the content related to the use of firearms.
"Guns, there are two more! Don't you know how to use them? They look pretty cool!"

Suddenly:

A faint exclamation came from above and behind the skinny man; it sounded like thunder in the originally silent room.

"But do you have a gun permit? And as I recall, handguns are illegal in the autonomous state. Not only that, but that rifle is fully automatic, right?"

The skinny man froze, the manual in his hand creaking. Goosebumps and a chill rose along his back and forearms, reaching up to his ridged neck.

But the faint words still came from behind him, as if they were touching the back of his head:

"I heard some banging here, so I came to see if you were okay. We're neighbors, after all, and I wanted to check on you."

Boom!

The skinny man didn't even finish listening to these words, and took action first:
He suddenly fell forward, his hands and feet flailing around as he crawled forward; until he finally touched the wall in the corner of the room, the skinny man finally turned around and leaned his back against the wall.

Through his blurred vision caused by myopia, the skinny man saw the boy hanging from the ceiling: the five fingers of one hand were embedded in the cobweb-covered plaster of Paris, supporting his weight; the rest of his body and limbs hung casually, like a student raising his hand to ask a question in class -
Aside from the slightly dangling legs, the shiny yellow raincoat also had a certain dizzying, psychedelic quality.

The skinny man's new neighbor, Doudou, whom he had just met, was still talking to himself:

"But... I hung here looking at you for a while, and finally remembered."
-
"I remember where I've seen you before, Uncle. You looked so familiar to me that I thought we just got along."

Da da.

Doudou pulled his right hand out of the plasterboard and dropped it lightly to the ground.

The figure, still small compared to an adult, appeared even larger in the yellowed raincoat. Doudou had his back to the corridor light outside the window, and the skinny man couldn't see his face clearly.
"You're the wanted criminal on TV and radio—the mathematician, the mathematician. Oh! A doctor. [The Iron Ruler Murderer], [Dr. Iron Ruler]! I've heard so much about you. I knew you were a big star! Why didn't you admit it then?"

"The wanted poster has been on for months, right? You're so darn good at escaping, you've lost so much weight. I'm really amazing that I could recognize you."

The skinny man gasped violently and rummaged around with his hands, but he couldn't find anything that could serve as a temporary weapon for self-defense.

The gun was dropped not far away, right at Doudou's feet: the skinny man's brief escape instinct made him subconsciously use his limbs to achieve the fastest escape speed -
"Why are you using a gun? Where's your iron ruler? Where's the Iron Ruler Demon? Does he look down on me? Wait, let me take a look at these guns first and then talk to you."

Doudou squatted down, picked up the L85 rifle at his feet, and looked carefully from left to right:

"Wow—this is my first time touching a real gun. It's so light."

He grasped the gun with one hand and the barrel with the other—
Crunch, crunch.

Doudou was holding the gun like a spring-loaded gripper, bending the gun body and barrel together and then opening them again; he twisted them back and forth, and the bend made a funny trilling sound.

After fiddling with it for about ten rounds, he finally felt bored: he put the bullpup L95 rifle in front of his chest with both palms, kneading and squeezing it.

Until this sophisticated man-made object turned into a twisted ball, each metal part was stuck together like spread out plasticine; and the engineering plastics shattered into slag and scattered all over the ground.

"Oh, it feels just like that when you hold it in your hand."

DouDou clicked his tongue, gently hefting the lump of metal that had been a weapon just moments before in his palm. Drip, drip.

Liquid trickled down the skinny man's trouser legs and onto the floor. He was incontinent, but he felt no shame. In fact, at that moment, his mind was blank, like static.
-
Doudou casually tossed the newly created spherical scrap metal aside, letting it roll around; the night outside the window was quiet:
"You give me a bad impression. Neighbors should be honest with each other, right? Even if you did something bad, you should tell me."

The boy named Doudou took two steps forward: each step felt like stepping directly on the skinny man's heart; he froze in place, not even having the strength to continue running away.

"I don't like liars, and I don't like bad people even more."

Doudou squatted down and grabbed the skinny man's head with his hand. The skinny man could feel the cold touch of his palm against his forehead. His scalp began to be pulled from the periphery to the center.
Can human hands be so cold?

While his mind was full of random thoughts, the skinny man's mouth reacted even faster:

"Wait! Wait!! Wait a minute! I'm your neighbor first!"

"I didn't lie to you, I just didn't tell you everything!"

The skinny man gasped for breath, his lungs making a strange gurgling sound like a bellows:

“And, and”

He racked his brains and finally found a rebuttal:

"When we met before, you also refused to tell me where your family went. I asked you many times."

Doudou pulled his hand back slightly—the skinny man could feel the pain in his scalp ease slightly:
"Oh yeah, sorry, that was my fault; I forgot to tell you."

He raised his hand and pointed at the ceiling above his head:
"My parents are in heaven."

"I think they all seem to be having a good time."

Bad: The skinny man shuddered with fear--
This answer made him realize that he had asked the wrong question. Absolutely wrong! Bringing this up now to defend himself was a death knell.

[Nonsense, all nonsense! The most dangerous place is the most dangerous place. Safety is bullshit! !]

Doudou looked into the skinny man's eyes, his words full of seriousness:
"Then the part about being honest—we've already covered it! But you're a serial killer, a bad person. It's terrible to have someone like that in the neighborhood! You're scaring me so much I can't sleep."

The cold, soft touch reappeared on the man's forehead. He waved his hands around, slapping his palms against his head, but it felt like he was hitting a concrete support column. Only his fingers and palms were thumping and hurting.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry for not telling you the truth! I'm not a bad person, I'm really not a bad person, and I'm not a murderer! No matter what they say, I didn't do it! I was wronged. How can I use a ruler to kill someone in my condition?!"

Doudou stood up straight, grasped the skinny man's head, and lifted the skeletal body up. He looked left and right, sizing up his scrawny neighbor and his eyes, blurred by his severe myopia. His facial features were twisted into comical shapes by the stretching of his skin.

"Well--"

After pondering for a moment, Doudou raised the index finger of his other hand and placed it in front of his mouth:

"Shh, shh!"

"Wait, wait! Stop for a moment. You really do look more like the victim in a murder movie. Maybe you're the kind who was wrongly accused? But I need to be sure!"

"From now on, I'll ask you questions and you answer them. Cut out the nonsense: what you're saying now is like a villain in a movie. I can't believe it at all."

The skinny man raised his palms and covered his mouth tightly - but his head was held by the handle, so he couldn't nod hard to express his agreement.

Doudou frowned seriously and stared into the other person's bulging eyes:

"The TV said you were a PhD in mathematics?"

The skinny man's head trembled more than nodded:
"Yep."

Doudou narrowed his eyes even more seriously, almost gleaming with brilliance:
"So you're definitely doing your high school math homework, right? The kind you do during the summer?"

A strange question--
"Uh wow!"

Perhaps it was because of fear, or perhaps it was because of the bizarre absurdity; the skinny man could no longer bear it, and with a strange cry, he vomited everything in his stomach.

(End of this chapter)